File-photo-Shashi-Tharoor-and-Sunanda-Pushkar-HT-Photo-Manoj-Verma

Tharoor's tweet, "@narendramodi My wife is worth a lot more than your imaginary 50 crores. She is priceless. But you need2be able2love some1 2understand that," which was retweeted over 1300 times and favorited by nearly 300, led to a Twitter fight between supporters of both the politicians.

Speaking to reporters after he tweeted, Tharoor said, "He (Modi) was silly to make that remark.. so I replied saying my wife is priceless.. and I added that he needs to love someone to understand that.. now we have to see if he is capable of understanding that.."

Modi was alluding to the 2010 IPL controversy which led to Tharoor resigning as minister of state for external affairs. He however stopped short of naming either Tharoor or Pushkar.

Modi at the rally also hit out at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh dubbing him 'Maun' Mohan Singh.

The tech savvy chief minister, whose account has more than one lakh followers on Twitter, seemed to be at the receiving end of brickbats for his comment, while there were those who stood by Modi.

Earlier in October, it was reported that over 40% of Modi's followers were fake, according to a social media tool 'Status People', developed by a group of engineers in London.

Tharoor, too, is not new to Twitter controversies. In 2009, when asked if he would travel cattle class when he next visited Kerala, Tharoor tweeted, "Absolutely, in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!"